"Perhaps, but how do you know?"
"I don't. It's fancy. Some people spend their lives awake, others dreaming." He shrugged his shoulders. "I dream. And sometimes the dream's so real that I know it must be true."
Sylvia smiled with a shy wistfulness he had not seen on her face before.
"I wish you wouldn't dream we were going to quarrel," she said. "I don't want to lose you as a friend."
"You won't. Some day I shall be able to help you, when you want help badly."
Almost imperceptibly her mouth hardened its lines, and her eyes recovered their disdainful, independent fire.
"Why should I want help?" she asked.
"I don't know," was all he could answer. "You will."
Their canoe had drifted to the Rollers. The Seraph landed, helped Sylvia out of the boat, and stood silently by while it was hauled up and lowered into the water on the other side. As they paddled slowly through Mesopotamia neither was able—perhaps neither was willing—to pick up the threads of the conversation where they had been dropped. In silence they passed the Magdalen Bathing Place, through the shade of Addison's Walk, under the Bridge and alongside the Meadows. Sylvia's mind grappled uneasily with the half-comprehended words he had spoken.
"Do we meet and make it up?" she asked with assumed lightness of tone as the canoe passed through the scummy, winding mouth of the Cher and shot clear into the Isis.